38 items
Linda Perry wailing "what's going on?" over a strummed anthem the whole planet sang along to in 1993 — titled "What's Up?" because Marvin Gaye had already claimed the obvious name. It hit number fourteen in the US, topped charts across Europe, and then got the strangest second life in pop history: as the internet's beloved He-Man meme.
Key the truck, carve your name in the seats, take a Louisville Slugger to the headlights. Carrie Underwood's revenge anthem crossed over from country radio to everywhere in 2006–07, spent 64 straight weeks on the Hot 100, and became — for a time — the best-selling country song, period.
![Video thumbnail — Cher - Believe (Official Music Video) [4K Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nZXRV4MezEw/hqdefault.jpg)
"Do you believe in life after love?" — though half the school bus could swear she was singing "life after life." Cher's 1998 comeback single was the Auto-Tune big bang: the first time most of the planet heard a human voice warble like a machine, and the moment a 52-year-old icon out-charted the entire pop landscape.
The swelling string loop, Richard Ashcroft shoulder-checking his way down a London pavement without breaking stride, and the most famous royalty heist of the decade — a smash hit whose writer earned a grand total of $1,000 from it for 22 years. (This is The Verve, from England — no relation to Michigan's The Verve Pipe.)
Pop-punk's sneakiest hit started as an SR-71 album track before Bowling for Soup rebuilt it into a double-Platinum sing-along about a suburban mom stuck in the era of "Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana." The cruel joke wrote itself: the song about being nostalgic for the wrong decade is now the thing you're nostalgic for.
A couple with nothing left in common grasps for one shared thing and lands on the Audrey Hepburn movie — "we both kinda liked it." The kicker: Todd Pipes actually wrote it about a different Hepburn film entirely. Earnest, hook-driven, and the only thing the world remembers Deep Blue Something for.
![Video thumbnail — Busta Rhymes - Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check (Official Video) [Explicit]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQzvQO2LcA4/maxresdefault.jpg)
The human cartoon of 90s rap—hip-hop's most watchable man, a blur of dreadlocks and rubbery limbs who moved like he was made of springs. Trevor Smith stole posse cuts for a living and built a solo career on being impossible to look away from.
"I'm goin' down down baby, yo' street in a Range Rover..." — Nelly built his breakout single on the playground clap chant every kid already knew, and it carried St. Louis rap onto every radio in America in the summer of 2000.
The song that announced the arrival with attitude—released July 1997, it became the MTV template for boy-band spectacle when director Joseph Kahn shot the legendary haunted-mansion video where each member transformed into a classic horror monster. The production cost a reported million dollars, the choreography was airtight, and the "Am I original? Yeah!" call-and-response became instantly quotable.
![Video thumbnail — Goo Goo Dolls - Slide [Official Music Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yP4qdefD2To/hqdefault.jpg)
"May-ayy, do you wanna get married, or run away?" — the jangliest, sunniest radio monster of late 1998 was secretly a song about two scared teenagers facing a pregnancy. It topped four different airplay charts, and most people singing along never noticed what it was about.
![Video thumbnail — Snow - Informer (Official Music Video) [4K Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TSffz_bl6zo/maxresdefault.jpg)
"A licky boom boom down": a white reggae MC from Toronto toasting so fast nobody could transcribe it, atop the American charts for seven straight weeks. It was infectious, it was baffling, and it was divisive enough that Jim Carrey parodied it on national television.
Rick Rubin stripped Jay-Z down to bare guitar and cowbell, and the Marcy Projects kid recited a real 1994 traffic stop so precisely that a law professor later published a journal article dissecting it. "99 Problems" was endlessly quotable, taught in law schools, and inescapable in 2004—the sound of Jay-Z staging his own exit.
Timbaland looped a flute line from a 1957 Egyptian melody, Houston's UGK traded verses with Jay-Z, and the result was the yacht-party anthem of 2000. The song was iconic enough to fuel a decade-long copyright fight—and brash enough that Jay-Z himself later disowned the lyrics in the Wall Street Journal.
The massive follow-up that conquered Europe and cracked the US Top 10. That infectious "la da da dee da da da da" hook? It was completely improvised.
"Upside, inside out, she's livin' la vida loca..." — the horn-blasted crossover smash that made Ricky Martin a global superstar overnight and kicked the door open for 1999's Latin pop explosion. Five weeks at number one, and a whole summer of everyone yelling the chorus.
![Video thumbnail — Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...) [Official Music Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/n2qgHu7HJLw/maxresdefault.jpg)
"A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side..." — Lou Bega dug up a 1949 Cuban mambo, added a roll call of girls' names and a zoot suit, and created the most inescapable song of 1999. You still can't hear a trumpet stab without finishing the list.
The breakthrough single that launched Counting Crows from small-club acoustics into MTV ubiquity — two struggling musicians daydreaming that being rock stars would make everything easier. Its central confession, "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely," became the 90s' great be-careful-what-you-wish-for lyric: Duritz got the fame and spent years walking the song back.
A lazy, sun-warmed guitar line and a video that became bigger than the song: the Bee Girl, a kid in a homemade bee costume and big glasses, tap-dancing for a world that doesn't get her until she finds a field full of people just like her. MTV played it constantly, and it still lands.
Pop-punk with a violin section of one. Yellowcard's signature song only reached #37 on the Hot 100, but it went double Platinum and became the era's defining leave-this-town anthem — named for a street that doesn't quite exist.
The melancholy glow of 1997 radio: Jakob Dylan—yes, that Dylan—singing about the death of ideas over the year's most inescapable groove. It topped every rock format at once, won two Grammys, and never even appeared on the Hot 100.
The piano-rock breakout that introduced The Fray to the world — a mid-2000s radio staple about a falling-out with a brother, its title borrowed from his childhood nickname.
A goofy three-piece from Seattle armed with a two-string "basitar" and a three-string "guitbass"—and no apologies. The 1996 single off their triple-platinum debut hit No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted around the world. The video put them in an orchard where the trees grow cans of peaches, until ninjas ambush the band mid-song. "Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches" has lived in heads rent-free ever since.
The definitive told-you-so strut: a breakup revenge anthem gliding on a Tom Tom Club groove, delivered with total conviction. It topped the UK charts in 1996, hit number two in America a year later — and it has never really left.
"If you wanna go and take a ride wit me..." — HEY, MUST BE THE MONEY! Nelly's acoustic-guitar bounce was the sound of every radio, mall, and school bus in 2001, the laid-back victory lap off Country Grammar.
Men Without Hats' 1982 anthem — born when singer Ivan Doroschuk got thrown out of a club for pogo dancing — conquered the 1983 charts with one of the strangest videos of the MTV era. So why is it in a 90s database? Because Bio-Dome (1996) re-seeded it into a generation of cable kids who half-remember it as their own era's song, by a band half of them still misname "Men In Hats."
![Video thumbnail — Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life (Official Music Video) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/beINamVRGy4/maxresdefault.jpg)
"Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo..." — the sunniest-sounding smash of 1997 was a song about crystal meth, and the radio edit made sure you couldn't tell. The hook that soundtracked every summer barbecue was hiding one of the darkest lyrics on the dial.
OutKast's getting-dressed anthem and cultural forever-favorite. A Sleepy Brown hook over a Joe Simon soul sample that became the decade's smoothest flex. The video was a visual extravaganza—CGI backdrops, a beauty parlor, church scenes, and cameos from Ludacris, Chilli, and Goodie Mob.
A cheeky power-pop confection about a kid crushing on his friend's mother, built as a loving homage to the Cars — so faithful that Ric Ocasek assumed the opening riff was a sample. It wasn't. Add the Rachel Hunter video and you have the summer of 2003 in three minutes.
The wobbly-sweet Canadian brother-sister one-hit wonder: a hungover-sounding boy-girl trade-off over a looping disco sample, sun-bleached and effortless. If 1999 had an official lazy-summer-afternoon soundtrack, this was it.
![Video thumbnail — Sugar Ray - Fly [Official Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cxHkD7rUm_Q/hqdefault.jpg)
The song that flipped a funk-metal band into sunshine pop overnight—bleak lyrics about death and loss wrapped in a breezy reggae-tinged groove, with Mark McGrath's frosted tips as the era's defining haircut. It owned the radio all summer and never touched the Hot 100.
"I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch..." — LFO's nonsense-couplet summer anthem rhymed Chinese food with Bruce Willis and somehow became the sound of 1999. New Kids on the Block, macaroni and cheese; it made no sense and everyone knew every word.
An outcast anthem in a nasal falsetto: the kid with the AC/DC tapes everyone treated like a devil worshipper, pining for a girl out of his league. The twist — "two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby" — is one of pop's great reveals. America shrugged; the rest of the world made it enormous.
"You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals..." Bloodhound Gang's gleefully crude smash turned a biology-class euphemism into an inescapable party anthem — and the monkey-suit video sealed the deal.
"For the life of me, I cannot remember..." — the guilt-stricken confession ballad that all of 1997 alt-radio screamed along to without quite knowing what it was confessing. Rooted in something real, mostly made up, and somehow everyone's story at once. (The Verve Pipe, from Michigan — no relation to The Verve of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" fame, same year, different ocean.)
The platinum-blond Dru Hill frontman's solo signature — a 2000 smash so ubiquitous you couldn't escape it. 'She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck...' Sisqó turned a string section, a booming beat, and one very specific ode into the sound of that summer.
"Just go ahead now": the jangly riff every '90s kid can hum and the band name most of them can't produce. It made VH1's greatest-songs-of-the-'90s list and Blender's worst-songs-ever list — and honestly, both lists have a point.
The eurodance question nobody has ever answered: Haddaway's 1993 debut hit number one in a dozen-plus countries — then became immortal five years later as the head-bob anthem of SNL's Roxbury Guys. Baby, don't hurt me.
The love-triangle confession that made 18-year-old Usher a star: seven straight weeks at #2 on the Hot 100, held off the top the whole time by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997." The video — five Ushers dancing in perfect sync inside a white-and-purple circular room — became his visual signature.